“At last, the balance shifts.”

Welcome to the first Infinite Crisis preview card for the Shadowpact! Shadowpact is a team composed of magic users battling against The Spectre gone mad. To succeed, they need access to incredible power, and Conjuration gives it to them. This is the first time ever in the Vs. System that you’ll be able to recruit any character on your team a full drop ahead of your opponents. Slam down a game-breaking 8-drop on turn 7, or bring down a 5-drop on turn 4 to disrupt your opponent’s initiative completely.

The power of Conjuration, like that of all Magic plot twists, comes with a price. To represent the significant sacrifices necessary to attain great magical power, all Magic plot twists have an endurance cost associated with them. Conjuration is arguably the most powerful effect we have ever created in the game, so it is tagged with the greatest endurance cost of any Magic plot twist.

In the end, you have to ask yourself, “Is it worth it?”

Since you don’t yet know the characters in Shadowpact,* it will be difficult to judge exactly how powerful this card is. In many teams, paying 15 endurance for an extra resource point would be a debatable proposition, but for Shadowpact, a low endurance total is an asset. Many Shadowpact characters grant you extra power while your endurance is low, and others help you manage your endurance and eventually put your opponent into the same boat as you. Proper endurance management is critical to success with the Shadowpact.

How should you build a deck with Conjuration? One plan is to run it in a normal curve deck and use it if you would otherwise miss a drop. The danger with this plan is that you will need to have an alternate drop ready for the next turn. Another more aggressive strategy is to overload on a certain drop point and plan to make that recruit twice. So, instead of playing five to six 4-drops and four to five 5-drops, you can play eight or nine 5-drops and simply recruit them twice. This can put you way ahead and should allow you to convert the extra power into at least 15 points worth of endurance either dished out or saved.

In addition to rethinking your character curve, Conjuration also creates interesting ramifications for other card choices. Plot twists that key off of recruit costs, like Entangle and Swan Dive, are incredibly more useful when you have a character with a greater recruit cost than anything your opponent controls.  

This is without question one of my favorite cards in the set. It gives players access to a completely new play experience and forces you to reevaluate the importance of your endurance compared to board advantage. More important than that, though, this card is just plain fun. Playing out large characters before their time is an awesome experience, and hovering at a low endurance total the whole game before coming back to win is just cool. I hope you all have as much fun with this card as I have. I’ll be back next week to conjure up another article with insights into Infinite Crisis. As always, email me with comments and questions at Justin_Gary@upperdeck.com, and don’t forget to check out the Infinite Crisis Sneak Preview tournaments on April 29 and 30!